


The Student Knight

by Merit



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2029503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merit/pseuds/Merit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kel will always want to be a Knight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Student Knight

When Kel told people when she was in Knight training, it took all of her Yamani training not to look offended. People tended to start, lean back and examine her body. Kel had never been curvaceous, and the Knight training had pretty eroded any last stores of baby fat, but she undeniably had a womanly body. It wasn’t everyone, Kel had to admit. She remembered two girls, blue clad, who had squealed in delight and danced around her, pleased that they had actually met a female Knight. Kel had laughed and said she wasn’t a Knight yet. That didn’t seem to diminish their joy. They helped, when Joren was being particularly unpleasant, Kel just had to think of their faces and remember why she had decided to became a Knight.

Kel had wanted to serve. She had seen Conal and the rest of her brothers emerge as better men after they had became Knights. Kel, even on the Yamani Islands, had plastered her room with pictures of Alanna; the King’s Champion and imagined being her Squire. When she heard the news that girls were allowed to start Page training, her heart had skipped a beat and her mouth had gone dry. She could become a Knight just like Alanna!

When Kel was sixteen she had sent off a request to the Royal Court at Corus. It hadn’t daunted her then that she would be the first girl to apply, though she had noticed her parents exchanging a glance above her head.

Sixteen was the youngest age one could apply to be a Page these days. Jonathon’s father had changed everything when he was crowned King. The traditionalists then may have muttered about the break in history, but Kel had heard they had been secretly pleased. Many Pages and Squires had died in the Bazhir conquest, children still. More had died in the Immortals’ War but at least the Pages and Squires these days usually had hair on chins, even if it was fuzzy.

A letter arrived, thicker than any of her brother’s and Kel had watched as her mother had traced her finger across the King’s Seal with a worried tilt to her mouth. But her mother had handed the letter over to Kel and waited patiently as Kel read through the missive. Her eyes were warm and sympathetic when Kel shook her head and crumpled the letter in her hand.

“They want me to be on probation,” Kel had spat out, her voice thick with emotion. She wished it had been an email, and then she could have deleted it and never had to read the word _probation_ again. She took a deep breath and bit back tears. When she opened her eyes the only hint of her outburst was a slight redness around her eyes. “They said it was allowed,” she said, voice dull.

“The King has many influences,” Ilane said, her musical voice full of sympathy. She took the letter out of Kel’s hands and read it quickly.

“I need to think about it,” Kel said, still stuck on the word _probation_. None of the boys would have to be on probation, she thought, a frown appearing on her fair forehead. None of them had ever had to. They were deemed acceptable by their hanging bits between their thighs.

There were the Queen’s Riders, but they wouldn’t allow her to join until she was eighteen. Kel didn’t want to spend another two years attending tea parties and pretending that her parents could find her a suitable match. Kel didn’t want anyone of that. She wanted to start training now.

In the end, it was easy. Becoming a Knight was never going to be easy, Kel thought. It wasn’t fair, the King wasn’t fair, bowing to partisan interests when he had already decreed that girls could serve as Knights. But Kel had decided that she wanted to be a Knight, that there was her calling, because in the deepest depths of her heart, it felt _right_.

 

* * *

 

Kel - perhaps self importantly she reflected later - had expected Alanna to contact her. Oh not the first day, Kel already had enough upheaval to deal with. The other Pages had stared at her and while Neal and his friends had befriended her quickly, Kel had to repress a shiver when she thought about Joren’s pretty face stretched in a nasty glare. But the silence stretched and Kel had hunched down, staring at her blasted trigonometry studies, and guessed that Alanna hadn’t really cared at all. Then one of her fellow Pages had begged for her assistance and Kel had forced a smile on her face and carefully explained triangles.

When she ate dinner, her navy dress very properly settling past her knees, she studiously ignored how Joren and his ilk glared at her across the tables. How unmannerly, she thought, her face blank. They would have never lasted in the Yamani Islands. The ladies of the court would have fanned their faces, their contempt written in the every gesture. While the lords of the court might have admired their military abilities, they would have deplored their brashness. It also wasn’t considered wise to anger a lady of the court; who knew which side of the fan she might turn on you.

It was times like this that Kel missed the Yamani Islands, even though she had missed most of court activities due to her young age. The Emperor’s arm mistress would have handed her a glaive or a gun and would have expected her to know how to use it. Kel suppressed a sigh and looked down at the remains of her dinner. She missed the food, too. There were a few trendy Yamani food places in Corus but the fish just wasn’t the same.

But even on the Yamani Islands, she wouldn’t be given the freedom to fight like a Knight. Kel might have received training in the fighting arts but it would have all been expected to be used in the defence of the home. Ladies weren’t expected to fight off pirates unless they were at the doorstep. And Kel wanted to make it possible so no one had to fight pirates.

 

* * *

 

In her third month of Knight training, Kel fell down the stairs. After one of the training instructors had seen her bruised cheek and cut lip, he had sent her off to Lord Wyldon with a curse about upstart young lords. Lord Wyldon stared at her, his face expressionless, and then looked away, his gaze on the sheaf of papers in his hand. There’s a shiny new tablet on the bookcase behind him that looks studiously unused and Kel isn’t even sure that his desktop was turned on. He was a traditionalist, Kel remembered being told.

“You fell,” he said, tone dry.

“Yes sir,” Kel said and resisted the urge to click her heels. She stared three inches to the left on his head and tried not to shift on her feet. They ached, as they had since the end of the first day of training. But Kel was fairly certain they would have ached even if she was male. It wouldn’t do her any good if she complained though. The men who had shot her dirty looks and groaned about their feet, their thighs, their sore backs, would have shut their mouths and glared at her like she was weak.

“The Knight program holds honesty to be one of the highest virtues,” Wyldon added.

“Yes sir,” Kel said, keeping her voice very steady.

“Ten laps around the training yard,” Wyldon said, looking down at the papers. A slight frown appeared on his brow before it is wiped away.

“Yes sir,” Kel said, actually clicking her heels together this time because Wyldon’s words were a clear dismissal. She bowed, because she was supposed to, because she was supposed to show respect even when she wasn’t given it. She returned to her quarters first, because she didn’t want to ruin her dress shoes or create more agony for her feet and put on her runners. She winced when she bent down and that had to be the moment that Neal saw.

“He didn’t do anything,” he tutted. Kel didn’t turn around and resisted the urge to sigh. Neal really could be a mother hen sometimes.

“I’m going for a run,” she said. Neal pursed his lips together and Kel just didn’t want another argument, so – “Did you want to join me?” She was almost certain that Neal wasn’t going to join her, who liked extra runs when they were already run ragged? But he nodded and walked a half pace behind her on the way to the training fields.

“You could – ”

“I can’t,” Kel said, shaking her head. “They’d just think I’m weak,” she said. “Joren and his bunch would find a way to twist things to their advantage. They have powerful friends at Court.” Kel’s father might have been the Ambassador to the Yamani Islands, but she was only two steps away from being of merchant blood. Even after King Jonathan’s reforms, society and especially Court hadn’t changed that much. The Knight program had quickly disillusioned Kel of that concept.

“My father, he wouldn’t stand for this, he’d support you,” Neal said mulishly, his words coming out after every deep breath.

Kel was silent for several moments. Her body was tired, her mind was tired. Kel had wanted to be Knight since she was a child. Even in this modern age they were held up as ideals. They didn’t start training as children these days, instead they spent a few short months as pages, testing their suitability as pages before they became squires.

Most of the newest pages were under twenty and she and Neal stuck out like sore thumbs. Neal because he was in his mid twenties and had been close to becoming a doctor before his brothers had died in the Immortals Wars and Kel because she was a woman. Kel - naively - she thought now with a wry grin, had believed that while it would be difficult to become a Knight, she wouldn’t face so much opposition. The King’s Champion was a woman and a Knight after all. People liked her, even if they didn’t approve of her.

But Alanna was different, Kel had been told. Different because Alanna had the Gift – did she cheat, they whispered – different because the Goddess had graced her. And Kel was Giftless and had no godly grace, just Yamani silence, stoicism and a metric ton of stubbornness.

“This is my battle,” she said, when they were rounding the tenth and final lap. Merric, Cleon and a few of the others were waiting at the end of the run and Kel gritted her teeth as they made their last torturous staggering yards to their fellow pages. Cleon handed a flask on water and Kel smiled at him gratefully before swigging it in relief. It was even cold. “Thanks,” she said, wiping her forehead. Her wrist came away wet. Cleon smiled at her, small and sweet and Kel tried to explain away the heat in her cheeks as merely from the run.

“My pleasure, my flower,” Cleon said, doffing an imaginary hat and bowing fancily at her. Kel resisted the urge to snort though she saw a few of the others rolling their eyes. If Cleon didn’t use such language on practically everyone, Kel might have been mortified. Kel had never seen herself as someone particularly beautiful, but she deliberately tried to avoid entanglements that might get rolled eyes from one of the boys, but would down the full force of Lord Wyldon if she was involved. That meant she had to ignore any butterflies forming in her stomach, Kel told herself.

They were walking back and Neal was making a deliberate move to trail the others, so Kel fell with him. “I do appreciate it, though,” she said. “But this is something I have to do by myself. If they think I get extra support then they won’t allow others to join the Knight program in the future.”

“You work twice as hard as those,” Neal twisted his mouth up in distaste and then let out a very rude word. Kel raised her eyes to the darkening sky and shook her head.

“Thanks,” she murmured, “But I’ll be fine. The program hasn’t killed me yet.”

Neal sighed dramatically. “You only say that because you’re still young. If you were an ancient man like me you would have perished already. I’m dead, you know,” he said, throwing a careless wink her way. Kel snorted. Neal might sigh and complain about being old but he kept up with everyone else. He was steadier than the others, Kel noted, maybe it came from his medical training.

 

* * *

 

They didn’t wear steel armour these days, other than super important ceremonies. Kel had heard when King Jonathan was crowned; the Knights of the realm had formed two rows of steel clad warriors. Kel had seen pictures and the Knights had glittered and shone like the heroes of old. Pennants and banners had flapped in the wind and even though you could still see the damage from the earthquake, the whole thing had a special air. Such was a power of royalty. Alanna of Trebond had been beaming at the front of the line. They had known she was a woman, then, but Alanna had always been special.

These days they wore Kevlar and thanked their stars for it. Because even if bullets didn’t always work on the Immortals, Kevlar worked better than steel. But even though Kel thought she would never be chosen as a royal honour guard, they all still had to learn to fight in full armour and more importantly move in one. It wasn’t as difficult as Kel had imagined, but it still was heavy and everyone tended to smell heavily of steel and polish at the end of the day. And sweat.

Kel blinked away her sweat, cursing the heavy arm braces that meant she could carelessly wipe it away. She steadied her sword and attacked her opponent, one of the other Pages still left at Court.

Afterwards Kel removed her armour and walked back to her quarters. She had forgotten, silly her, that someone had to choose her to be their squire. Everyone else had found someone through a family connection or through their own merit, but Kel was still at the palace, avoiding her peers, because she still had not being chosen.

Lord Raoul was standing there, looking awkwardly around her room and Kel desperately hoped that she hadn’t left any of her underthings out that morning. She cleared her throat and he jumped, looking guilty. She stood in the door frame, but carefully didn’t enter. “Sir?”

“I was watching you out there,” Raoul said, waving his hand vaguely in the direction of the training fields. “You’re a solid, uh, swordswoman.”

Kel nodded. “My thanks, my lord. I’m also a decent markswoman,” she added, then ducked her head.

“I’ve heard,” Lord Raoul said, “And I would like to extend my offer for you to become my Squire,” Lord Raoul said then smiled. “It’ll be hard work, the King’s Own doesn’t spend much time at Court – I try to make sure of that. But the work can be fulfilling and you would be learning every day.”

“You want me to be your Squire?” Kel asked her voice very quiet because she couldn’t quite believe her ears. While she had burned when Alanna had chosen Neal, Raoul was Lord Commander of the King’s Own, the finest fighting and policing force in Tortall. They handed incredibly high level tasks and Lord Raoul was known for avoiding taking a Squire. He had killed a giant! He was almost as legendary as Alanna. It didn’t seem quite real that he would choose Kel – the _girl_ – to be his Squire.

“You’re qualified,” Raoul said seriously. “I’ve seen your test scores and I’ve watched in on more than one of your training sessions.” Kel blushed, thinking of how she had been roiling in self pity and he had been _watching_ her. “Plus,” he said, shrugging his huge shoulders, “It’ll send the old conservatives twitching and I love that.”

Kel smiled nervously. “I’d love to! Um. When do we leave? It won’t take me long to pack,” she rushed, looking around her room and eyeing what she truly needed.

Raoul laughed. “Patience, my Squire,” and Kel grinned as he said that. “We leave in a few days.”

She nodded, biting her lip because she was still so nervous and excited and embarrassed. This was almost everything she had dreamed of. But Raoul was looking at her kindly, so she couldn’t have acted that out of turn. Lord Raoul left and Kel slowly closed the door. She grinned at her empty room. She was finally becoming a Squire. The old conservatives hadn’t beaten her. Her dream of becoming a Knight seemed even closer to reality.

Kel beamed.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanted to write a version of modern day Kel and this came out ^^ One day I'll get around to writing the Private Academy version...


End file.
